


Noisy No. 702

by wickedlupin



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-29 04:18:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17800913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedlupin/pseuds/wickedlupin
Summary: Tear wages war with her obnoxious upstairs neighbor.





	Noisy No. 702

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @FurenIRL on twitter, for Tales of Covert Cupid!

Tear woke up to the very specific sound of a distant laugh track at full volume. She was able to pinpoint it as such so easily, because this was the fourth night in a row now that she had been subjected to it.

Tear’s new upstairs neighbor had moved in a week prior, and it seemed that he lacked even an ounce of self-awareness. He stomped around his apartment constantly, left the TV at full volume, and had loud phone conversations late into the night.

She tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he hadn’t realized yet that the floors and walls of their building were paper thin. Tear hadn’t actually had the opportunity to meet this neighbor yet, and so she had refrained from complaining right off the bat.

But enough was enough.

Tear threw a robe on over her pajamas and trekked upstairs. She knocked firmly, three times, and stood with her arms crossed, waiting for the door to open.

She could hear the TV blaring on the other side of the door, yet no one came to answer her knock. She tried again. There was a pause, and finally, the door opened to reveal a sour looking man with long red hair tied back in a ponytail.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” he demanded, scoffing at Tear without so much as an introduction.

Heat rose to Tear’s cheeks. “Excuse me? Do _you_ have any idea?”

“I asked first,” the man shot back childishly.

“It’s _three fourty in the morning_ ,” Tear said, a sharp edge to her words. Any assumed credit she had given to this man was immediately revoked. “ _Please_ try to keep it down.”

The man made a show of rolling his eyes. “I wasn’t even being that loud, relax. No one else has complained to me about it.”

Tear took a deep breath, keeping her voice dangerously level. “I didn’t want to introduce myself this way, so I held off the past couple of nights. I am telling you now that I can hear everything you do in my apartment downstairs. So please try to be considerate in the future. _Goodnight_.”

She turned her back on him and marched back down the way she had come.

If she was lucky, the volume may have been turned down a couple notches, but it continued to blare through the floor until dawn.

She lay awake, seething, and realized she hadn’t even gotten the rude man’s name.

  
The noise persisted on a nightly basis, and Tear now took her complaints about the occupant of number 702 directly to the front office. If Tear had to hear every heavy footfall, every booming phone conversation, and every episode of The Office, the landlord would hear about them, too.

At least half the time, when the landlord went knocking at the door upstairs instead of her, the noise quieted down for a while.

A month of this passed, and a moving truck made an appearance again. Tear heard the clatters and bangs of furniture being taken upstairs, and the loud screech of large pieces being scooted into place. Tear could only hope that at the end of this final, noisy day, she would be left with a more polite, peaceful neighbor.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

Someone new had moved in, for sure—but it seemed her original, insufferable neighbor was still around. Now, in place of the loud TV and booming laughter, she heard incessant shouted arguments, and two pairs of stomping feet.

“Stop that.” The new voice that had moved in was stern and sharp, but matched his roommate in volume.

“I’m not doing anything!”

“You’re tapping your foot! It’s infuriating!”

“If it bothers you so much, go study in the other room!”

“ _You_ go tap your foot in the other room!”

Tear sighed, setting her pencil down on the sheet music she was taking notes on.

“Why should I be the one to move?!”

“Hm, let’s think on that!” The stern voice rose in volume, which Tear hadn't thought possible. “I got you a good job with reasonable hours, which you sabotaged by being an _absolute prick_ , and made me look like an idiot for recommending you in the first place! Then, after everyone complained about you enough to get you fired, I graciously moved in here, because you couldn’t pay the bills on your own!”

There was momentary quiet, followed by loud stomping. Tear looked up at the ceiling.

He deserved to be put in his place like that. But Tear felt a certain degree of pity for the man, as well. She slipped on her shoes, ascended the stairs for the second time, and knocked thrice.

The red-haired man opened the door more promptly than he had a month ago. Tear opened her mouth at once, determined to get the first word in this time.

“I want to give you one more warning,” she said. “Please be considerate about your volume, and I won’t report you to the landlord.”

The man’s red eyebrows were knitted together in a look of confusion. Surely he had to know that she had been filing complaints about him, right?

“Who are you?”

Tear stared at him incredulously. “I’m—“ She was cut off by a shout further inside the apartment.

“It’s you!”

Tear looked over the redhead’s shoulder and spotted… an identical redhead, pointing right at her. A duplicate. They must be twins, and she was speaking to the wrong one. Her face turned scarlet.

“Forgive me,” she said, addressing the man in the doorway, “I thought you were…”

But the man in the doorway was turning to shout at his brother. “You idiot, how many noise complaints have you racked up?! Are you trying to get fired and evicted in the same week?!” He didn’t wait for an answer before turning back to Tear.

“You must already know my dumbass brother. I’m Asch.”

Tear nodded. “I’m Tear. I live downstairs. Just so you know, the walls and floors in this building are incredibly thin, so it’s easy to hear everything you do up here.”

“We’ll try to keep it down.”

  
Tear liked to do her laundry early in the morning. The laundry room was small, dimly-lit, and lacking air conditioning, so it was best to get it done in the hours that it was mostly empty, and before the room became unbearably hot. She pushed the door open with her back, wrestling with a full basket of clothes. She spun with the basket to make her way into the room, set the load on top of a machine, and finally noticed a body occupying a chair in the far corner. Unusual for this time of day, but not unheard of. She separated her clothes into two machines, then took a seat herself.

Minutes passed, and she immersed herself in a score she was writing out. She was interrupted by the sound of her name emitted from the stranger in the corner.

“…Tear?”

She looked up, confused, and realized that the stranger was none other than Mr. 702. She hadn’t recognized him right away. His long, fiery hair had been chopped off.

“Good morning,” Tear said curtly.

“Morning,” the redhead answered. His voice was soft. Tear hadn’t known he was capable of speaking at such a low level. “…I wanted to apologize,” he continued, “for being so rude to you before.”

Tear raised her eyebrows. There had been improvement. Although she still heard frequent shouting matches from the twins upstairs, the noise had decreased considerably, and Tear had refrained from complaining about them for the past couple of weeks. But all of this considered, she still hadn’t expected a heartfelt apology like this from the one neighbor she had sworn to be an enemy.

“Thank you,” Tear said finally. The redhead ruffled the back of his hair, seeming a bit self-conscious. It was almost… cute.

“Luke,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“I’m Luke. I don’t think I ever introduced myself. Sorry.”

“Oh—of course. I suppose I only knew your brother’s name.”

Luke nodded. Tear’s gaze returned to her score as they fell into uncomfortable silence.

“You cut your hair,” Tear offered as a conversation starter.

Luke ran his fingers through his red fringe. “Yeah. It’s a symbol that I’m trying to change.” Tear noticed a hint of blush rise to his cheeks. “It sounds kind of stupid when I say it out loud, though.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid. It shows you’re serious.”

Luke smiled, raising his head. “You think so?”

Tear nodded, returning his smile. “I do.”

“Thanks, Tear.”

Tear wondered what he must have gone through to inspire such a drastic change—how much of his old personality was still there?

“…Are you okay?” Tear asked after another minute of silence. “I heard you lost your job.”

Luke grimaced. “Yeah. I really blew it. That’s why Asch moved in here.”

She had heard that, too, through their many arguments that took place above her on a daily basis. But she didn’t say that.

“You don’t seem to get along very well with him.”

Luke sighed. “He has what’s best for me in mind… I think. He’s just strict about it. And recent circumstances aren’t exactly helping to bring out his affectionate side.”

“That’s good to hear, at least. He’s looking out for you. He wouldn’t have moved in with you if he wasn’t, right?”

“Exactly.” Luke smiled again. “Thanks for listening, Tear. You’re actually really nice.”

Tear crossed her arms. “You sound surprised. I would have been perfectly nice from the start, if you had treated me like this.”

Luke’s smile turned sheepish. “Right. Sorry.”

She felt a certain fondness for him growing, turning up the corners of her mouth.

“I forgive you.”

  
Tear began seeing Luke regularly in the laundry room, every Thursday at eight in the morning. She even found herself looking forward to it. Their conversations carried on about anything from the weather to deeper insecurities. Some days, Tear’s clean laundry would be left sitting in the dryer for hours while she continued talking with him. Other days, she was more on top of it, determined to get home and hang her dresses before they wrinkled. And one day, Luke offered to accompany her home to fold it all.

Tear’s apartment was tidy, organized, and minimalist. Two bookshelves stood in the living room, filled neatly with binders of sheet music. Beside it was a folding music stand. A couch was pushed back against the wall, which Tear dumped the laundry onto, and began to fold towels.

Luke was looking around at everything, his own folding job sloppy. He set a ‘folded’ shirt that was really more of a lump atop Tear’s crisply folded pile. She clicked her tongue and picked it up herself. “You’re terrible at this,” she jabbed.

Luke blushed. “I only started doing my own laundry a few months ago, cut me some slack.”

Tear laughed, setting the refolded shirt back in her pile. “That makes me want to cut you even less slack.”

Luke focused harder on the next shirt he lifted from the pile. The results were satisfactory.

“You’re the one I hear singing sometimes, aren’t you?”

It came out of nowhere, and Tear felt herself grow flustered. “You heard me?” Her voice came out higher than she intended it to.

“Well… yeah. We can hear you through the thin walls just as easily as you can hear us.”

Tear hid her face behind a bath towel. “I was just practicing, it’s not my best…”

“Are you kidding? Your voice is beautiful.”

Tear slowly lowered the towel. Luke’s face was almost as red as her own, and his eyes met hers with intensity. She felt her heart pounding in her chest.

“…Thank you,” she said softly. Somehow, hearing the compliment from Luke made her giddy. When had his opinion come to mean so much to her?

“I mean,” Luke cleared his throat, “I’d love to hear an actual performance from you, if what I’ve heard is just practicing. I can’t imagine something even more stunning than what I’ve heard…”

“Maybe… sometime.” Tear’s voice was muffled by the towel her face had returned to.

  
It had been a busy day for Tear. She had gone straight to work after class, and had errands to run when work finally dismissed her. She was exhausted, but she at least felt that sense of accomplishment that accompanied full days such as these. She set her grocery bags down on the counter, and let herself sink onto the couch.

Scarcely a minute later, a knock sounded at the door in a familiar rhythm. She stood to answer it, unlocking the deadbolt and opening it to let Luke inside.

“I heard you come home,” he said, stepping into the apartment. Tear smiled, feeling warmth wash over her at the sight of him.

“And you ran down here the moment you heard, didn’t you?” she teased.

Luke rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. “Well… I was excited to see you.”

She laughed a little. “It’s good to see you, too.”

Tear sauntered back to the kitchen, taking things out of her grocery bags to put them away. Luke followed her.

“Need some help?”

“Sure. I appreciate it.”

They both moved around the kitchen, opening and closing cupboard doors, occasionally bumping shoulders as they passed one another. Tear slid the last box of cereal onto a shelf in the pantry, then stretched. That was it; that was everything she needed to accomplish for the day.

Luke was already making himself at home on the couch now that the job was done. He sprawled out across the length of the cushions, yawning. Tear stood before him, and crossed her arms.

“Did putting away the groceries tire you out so much?”

Luke smiled up at her guiltily. “No, no, I’m not tired.”

She prodded him in the side, making him squirm. “Move over, then. I _am_ tired.”

Luke obliged, sitting up the make room for Tear beside him. She sat down near the armrest, and Luke lay back down with his head in her lap. Tear couldn’t help but laugh.

“What are you doing? I thought you said you weren’t tired.”

Luke smiled up at her. “I changed my mind.”

She rolled her eyes, unconsciously petting his hair. Luke was childish, and he was still a bit of a brat. But he was kind. He was a genuinely good person, and he put effort into keeping his habitually rude tongue in check. Tear saw this effort. She respected him for it. And after knowing him, and learning all of these traits that made Luke who he was, she even found his bratty moments somewhat endearing.

Luke closed his eyes, smiling softly as Tear continued petting his short hair, running her fingers through the ends that stuck out at the back of his neck.

“I could use a nap myself,” Tear murmured.

“Don’t let me stop you,” Luke answered, without so much as opening his eyes.

Her fingertips still rested on the back of Luke’s neck when impulse took over her. She leaned over him, her long hair falling from behind her ear to tickle his face, and kissed his cheek.

Luke’s eyes opened, staring up at her in surprise. Tear felt her face burning. She had gotten too caught up in the moment, with how much she now cared about the stupid boy with his head in her lap.

“Tear?”

“Take a nap if you want to. I’m going to rest my eyes.” She did exactly that, retreating behind her eyelids to avoid Luke’s inquisitive gaze. His warmth left her lap, and her eyes opened again, finding him now sitting up beside her.

“You lay your head in my lap, instead,” he said.

“What?”

“Here.” Luke patted his legs, as if inviting a dog to come sit with him. Tear almost protested against the odd gesture, but despite everything, she gave in.

There was no way she’d be able to sleep like this. Her heart was going to leap out of her chest. She felt Luke’s fingers gently pull her hair behind her ear. She glanced up at him, and he froze, leaning over her, caught by her gaze.

Was he going to kiss her cheek like she had his? He was still leaning close to her, seemingly conflicted on where to go now that she had seen him. His hair stuck up a bit on the side from laying down previously. Tear unconsciously reached up to smooth it down, and suddenly, Luke’s lips were on hers.

Tear immediately gave up on the cowlick, her hand resting in his hair instead as she kissed him back. His lips were a bit coarse, but they were gentle, and inviting. The kiss only lasted for a few seconds, but Tear didn’t think she would have stopped him if he kissed her for the rest of the evening. But he pulled his lips away, eyes searching hers.

Tear exhaled softly, fumbling for something to say. “…Your hair was sticking up,” she said at last, smoothing her hand against the side of his head.

Luke’s face turned scarlet. “Oh… I, you… I thought you were reaching for me.”

Tear sat up a bit, facing him. “That’s because you think the world revolves around you.” Before he could respond, she wrapped her arms around his neck. “But just to be clear, I’m reaching for you now.”

Luke’s arms wrapped around her, and she smiled.

Tear couldn’t believe she had fallen in love with such a big idiot.


End file.
